Some people say it's foolish to worry about soulless creatures overtaking the earth and devouring our brains.
I say they've already won.

Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Thursday, May 4, 2017

Zombie Trumpcare

Third time is the charm, apparently, for the GOP's long held goal of stripping health insurance from Americans and making even existing health care programs dysfunctional.

There is a strong possibility that this shitburger of a bill passes the House. There is a much, much stronger possibility that if it does, it dies or is completely re-written in the Senate. I can think of three Senate Republicans who will vote against this bill. My guess is that number could go up.

Of course, as bad as the GOP is at math, maybe it dies in the House today. But if it does pass, this is a gift for Democrats. There is gathering evidence that 2018 could be a wave election, the kind strong enough to deliver the House to Democrats. What will be necessary is a strong message to nationalize the campaign. The GOP voting on a bill that - when the CBO is finally allowed to score it - will show that tens of millions of Americans will lose their coverage and tens of millions more will see what coverage they DO have hollowed out.

Yet, for ideological reasons, the GOP appears intent on recreating the Charge of the Light Brigade into the chattering guns of public opinion.

There is a scenario where the Senate actually passes the bill, but if that happens, the GOP is on the hook even more for the catastrophe that follows. Even more comical is a situation where the Senate rewrites the House bill so substantially that it fails to pass when it's returned to the House. Basically, we can watch while the GOP spends a calendar year working as hard as possible to fail to pass a bill that will kill Jimmy Kimmel's son.